[Nuke]

my hunch is that there are multiple builds of the dll file in the openal installer for different system configurations/operating systems/64 or 32 bit/etc, and this may just be the wrong version for my system.

[Goober5000]

I just edited my post.  Try using regsvr32 and see if that makes a difference.

[Fury]

I see what you mean about OpenAL.  Hmm.  I'll have to look into this, because I was under the impression that just copying the file to the directory should work.

EDIT: Oh, this might be a DLL registration problem.  If you run regsvr32 on the OpenAL.dll, does that fix it?  I can add that capability to the installer.

Registering the dll should not be needed, just dropping the dll where FSO executable resides should do the trick. As long as you use the old launcher, since wxLauncher doesn't know to look for the dll anywhere else but from system path or its own dir.

[Luis Dias]

Ah, so perhaps drop the OpenAL in both the Freespace FSO executable and the wxlauncher's folder? People actually use the new launcher.

yeah it sounds inelegant to say the least.

[Nuke]

im not entirely sure im running this right, i get:

The module "openal32.dll" was loaded but the entry-point DllRegisterServer was not found.

Make sure that "openal32.dll" is a valid DLL or OCX file and try again.

it didnt make the game run though. i even tried rebooting. also im not using wxlauncher, just the usual one the installer installs.

[Fury]

I just tested this myself and Nuke is correct. FSO can't find any audio devices with OpenAL32.dll dropped into same dir as the exe. Which is baffling because it used to work. Then I remembered that the last time I played FSO with audio was before I got my current sound card, which is Sound Blaster Z.

Then I went and put the OpenAL32.dll supplied with Creative's drivers to FSO dir and wxLauncher dir and had my audio back. So it looks like Sound Blaster and OpenAL Soft do not get along, I don't know why. Creative's drivers do install OpenAL32.dll to system32 and syswow64 but I had them renamed. Guess I have no choice but to use them.

Nuke, you can get Creative's OpenAL from here: http://scp.indiegames.us/builds/oalinst.zip
Original website where it used to be hosted is long gone, even Creative is not willing to support it anymore.

[Nuke]

i have an openal installer that works. at least it did before i reinstalled windows to my new ssd a few months ago (no other hardware changes so it should work). i just haven't installed it yet because i wanted to test the installer's ability to deal with it.

[karajorma]

I still don't understand why you don't just run the OpenAL installer. The Diaspora installer did that and it avoided a lot of stupid issues. If you're running regsvr32, you might as well do things properly.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I still don't understand why you don't just run the OpenAL installer.

OpenAL Soft is "installed" by copying a .dll file. Running regsvr32 is a red herring; as Fury said:

Registering the dll should not be needed, just dropping the dll where FSO executable resides should do the trick.

[jr2]

Is Creative's or another company's version of OpenAL (pre-installed in the system by the audio drivers) conflicting with the .dll?  Like (from a while back) the 1.0 .dll would conflict with the 1.1 dll?

[Goober5000]

I still don't understand why you don't just run the OpenAL installer. The Diaspora installer did that and it avoided a lot of stupid issues.

I was trying to avoid any reason to run the Installer with elevated privileges.  Simply copying the DLL to FS2 file sounded like it would have been sufficient, based on Fury's and others' posts.  Besides, it can be tricky to elevate a process's privileges from within Java.

However, after some searching, it turns out that a number of other people have had problems with copying the OpenAL DLL, not just Nuke here.  Vista seems to be especially error-prone (no surprise there).  Fortunately, I also found a way to fairly painlessly elevate privileges while still using the standard UAC prompt.  So everything should be straightened out after the next update.

[Fury]

Goober, do not confuse the issue.

The problem here was not that Nuke (or I for that matter) needed admin privileges to copy the OpenAL32.dll to syswow64, the problem was that for whatever reason OpenAL Soft's dll proved to be incompatible with our sound cards. I do not know what sound card Nuke has, but this is the first time I've personally encountered this issue. In the recent past I've used onboard Realtek audio of two different motherboards, Asus Xonar and now Sound Blaster Z. Only with the Sound Blaster did OpenAL32 Soft refuse to work.

In all of these cases I never needed OpenAL32.dll to be installed into system32 or syswow64, it was enough to have it in FSO and wxLauncher directories. This applies to Creative's OpenAL32.dll as well. So again, there is no need to run the OpenAL32 installer with elevated privileges to install the dll into system32 or syswow64.

Instead, the trick here is to somehow determine which OpenAL32.dll should be copied to the FSO dir. I'm still of the opinion that OpenAL Soft is superior of the two, despite it refusing to work with my current sound cad (the Sound Blaster Z).

Hopefully these problems will go away entirely when SCP gets to the point where SDL handles audio as well...

Is Creative's or another company's version of OpenAL (pre-installed in the system by the audio drivers) conflicting with the .dll?  Like (from a while back) the 1.0 .dll would conflict with the 1.1 dll?

Whatever dll is in FSO directory overrides whatever is found from system path. If FSO is not able to use the dll in FSO dir, then it falls back to system path. Either way, I had Creative's OpenAL32.dll's in both system32 and syswow64 renamed when I replicated Nuke's problem. So there was no conflict.

[Goober5000]

In my searches through the interwebs, I ran across this thread, which contained this quote:

On Windows Vista and 7 OpenAL will fail to initialize on some machines if you don't actually install it with the OpenAL installer. It isn't enough just to drop the DLL in the app folder.
http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/Downloads/oalinst.zip

This makes me lean toward using the OpenAL installer, despite the inconvenience of UAC.

I've re-uploaded OpenAL32.dll to the mod repository, this time making sure that it's the Creative DLL, not the OpenAL Soft DLL.  (I've added TrackIR also.)  See if this works.  If it does, I'll hold off on the UAC route for now.

[Fury]

By reading that topic, I get the impression that the problem was solved and the root cause was that 64-bit Windows was used, yet 32-bit dll was copied to system32 which is reserved for 64-bit dll's. The problem was solved by copying it to syswow64 instead, which is correct directory for 32-bit dll's. Of course, irrelevant to FSO since it can look for the dll in its own directory.

[Goober5000]

Well, that topic referred to this one, which contained a similar quote:

trogdor, I bet you are using Windows Vista and don't have OpenAL installed. I found out you actually have to install OpenAL on Vista, you can't just include the DLL like I did. In the future, I will just include the OpenAL installer along with the SDK, to make it simpler:
http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/Downloads/oalinst.zip

[Fury]

Well I suppose we'll find out how widespread that problem is.

[Nuke]

for reference im on win7-64. so it might be a 64/32 thing.

yea whatever you did it totally worked* that time.

*by worked i mean the game and launcher dont throw any errors and fs2 loads, but there are no sound devices available in the launcher and thus no sound in the game.

[Fury]

Nuke, would you mind disclosing what sound card you have?

[mjn.mixael]

If you are using wxL, the DLL need to be placed in its bin folder too. Lame, I know. However, it can't find the DLL in the freespace folder.

[Nuke]

just what came with the mobo. realtech hd audio i think. manual says its an alc887.